


The One

by prettydamnlame



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 05:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10353243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydamnlame/pseuds/prettydamnlame
Summary: An interviewer asks Tyler about how he knew that Josh was 'the one' - that he would be the perfect other half for Twenty One Pilots. Tyler answers honestly.





	

Tyler’s gaze was drifting off into the middle distance, tuning out slightly. This was the fifth and final radio interview he and Josh were booked to do this morning. Dimly, he was aware that Josh had just answered the same question he always got: _What was it like to join Twenty One Pilots as an already established act?_

“Tyler, when did you realise that Josh was the one?” The interviewer was asking brightly, gesturing from himself across to the drummer seated right beside him. “That Josh was – that he was going to be the other half of this band, this adventure that would take you all over the world and onto all this success?”

Tyler actually took pause at this question and didn’t immediately reply with a sarcastic answer. He scratched his fingernails lightly along the underside of the stubble on his chin as he looked over at Josh thoughtfully. His best friend’s dark eyes met his steadily, brightly dyed hair securely tucked under a beanie.

The singer remembered a handful of instances all at once.

* * *

 

_The first time he met Josh. Josh’s contagious smile and unbridled enthusiasm for Tyler’s music._

* * *

 

_The first time he and Josh hung out alone. They stayed up all night. Neither of them had realised the passage of time until the sky began to lighten again. Josh had glanced at his watch. ‘It’s six!’ He let out a disbelieving laugh. Tyler joined him, for a different reason, though; he couldn’t believe what he had found. This kindred spirit; this person he could stay up all night with, just talking, and never once feel tired. In that moment, he couldn’t believe he’d lived more than two decades on the face of this earth without knowing Joshua Dun._

* * *

 

_The first time Josh reached out to him for support. They were in a crowded bar together, somewhere in Columbus. They hadn’t so much as hugged before this moment, but suddenly, Josh’s fingers were sliding around Tyler’s wrist like a vice grip. ‘Tyler,’ the name choked out of his friend’s throat. The singer immediately recalled the time Josh had confided his anxiety to him. Tyler moved his free hand to Josh’s other hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘You wanna go outside?’ Unable to choke out anymore words, Josh had only nodded, and Tyler had led his friend by the hand out of the bar and right out into the deserted Ohio street. It was just him and Josh and the empty road, and Josh was breathing so heavily under those ugly yellow street lights, and Tyler’s heart hurt so much, he almost cried._

* * *

 

_The first time Josh had to physically pick Tyler up to get him back on his feet. By this time, he and Josh were each other’s first tier of support; they were best friends. It was at the very beginning of the Vessel tour. Josh had apparently been contacted by one of Tyler’s housemates: they were worried – he hadn’t gotten out of bed in days. Within minutes, Josh was at their house and in Tyler’s bedroom, pulling off the bedclothes, picking Tyler up bodily, stripping him off and putting him in the shower. ‘I’m sorry,’ Tyler remembered sobbing into the scalding hot water, not knowing if Josh would hear his apology from where he was sitting in the empty bathtub. ‘I’m so sorry that I’m like this.’_

_Josh had passed him a clean towel once he was done, and said strongly: ‘You don’t need to be sorry with me. Not ever.’_

* * *

 

That wasn't even including all the other seemingly tiny, infinitesimal moments that cemented Tyler's whole world: the shared excitement of glances across stage in front of a packed stadium; the knowing looks during tiring interviews; holding hands tightly during particularly turbulent flights; talking each other to sleep during restless nights on the tour bus, both of them crammed into the one bunk like sardines.

“Josh isn’t the other half of my band,” Tyler replied with a slight smirk. “When Josh joined Twenty One Pilots, this thing, this music – it wasn’t _mine_ anymore. It was both of ours.”

The drummer fidgeted a little beside the singer, slightly uncomfortable, but mostly thrilled, as he always was, when Tyler chose to answer this type of question seriously.

“If Josh was just an add-on to my band, what you’d be looking at and what you’d be hearing from us would be very, very different. Josh makes Twenty One Pilots… he makes it strong. He makes it powerful.”

The interviewer’s eyes were wide as Tyler talked openly and genuinely for the first time since they’d sat down together.

“He may have joined Twenty One Pilots after the fact of its creation, but what this band became wasn’t mine, in the end. It’s ours. Josh made Twenty One Pilots whole. He makes it real.” Tyler paused, attempting to add a bit of a joke onto the end of this emotional spiel, fearing he had said too much, too honestly: “For me, at least; I don’t know how everyone else feels about it. Probably just see him as a coattail rider, I guess.”

“Yeah, I know that’s how my family sees it!” Josh chimed in with a slightly too-loud laugh, and the interviewer laughed as well, her cheeks a little flushed from the intimacy of what she’d just heard.

The interviewer turned to the radio station's camera propped up to the table’s left and began the usual wrap-up.

Out of frame, Tyler felt Josh’s fingers wrap around his wrist tightly, just like all those years ago.

**Author's Note:**

> Just two happy boys.


End file.
